Qantas chief defends airline after three unscheduled landings

SYDNEY (AFP) – Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce on Tuesday defended the airline after it was forced to divert or turn around three planes in one day, saying its record was better than most.

Three Qantas flights made unscheduled landings on Monday, including an A380 that was put into a controlled descent and requested a priority landing in Perth after its air-conditioning system malfunctioned.

Joyce said the reality was that “thousands upon thousands” of turn-backs happened to airlines each year and Qantas experienced far fewer than the industry as a whole.

“We are very confident in Qantas’ reliability,” he told reporters in Brisbane. “We have really low levels of turn-backs compared to most of the world fleets.”